


Memories Fall

by kimaracretak



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/F, Mandy POV, Pre-Series (partly), also brief mandy/abbey bc obviously, i don't like the bechdel test as a fictest but this passes it if you care abt that sort of thing, mentions of mandy/josh but lbr who cares abt josh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mandy's tired of reaching out for others and finding herself with nothing but a handful of broken glass.</p><p>Spoilers for all of S1 generally and 1x19 "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet" and 1x22 "What Kind of Day Has it Been" specifically</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Hello I've a Mandy Hampton situation the size of the galaxy how are you doing?

Mandy counts days. Usually has, hopefully not-always will, but there's something about the Bartlet -- campaign? administration? -- _group_ that makes her count more often, running the numbers of the days up and down across the inside of her eyelids wondering when something's going to break. Hoping against all hope that whatever breaks won't be her.

She had counted the early days of the campaign, nights spent tangled in Josh's bed, both of them giddy and the special sort of overconfident you can only be when you know you have no real chance. Then had come the middle days of the campaign, too-brief brushes against Abbey's hands and too-heated looks exchanged during planning meetings that probably shouldn't be happening now that the campaign had a real chance; she counted those too. Then the days after she came back in Bartlet's second year, too-quick encounters with CJ that they both knew _really shouldn't be happening_ now that they were both West Wing staffers; she counted those at first but then there was the day when she realised that somewhere in the time when CJ's mouth had moved from her lips to her breast the numbers had gone quiet.

She starts counting the days again after they dig up her memo.

 

* * *

 

CJ is furious, of course, and it hurts more than it should because she knows that half of CJ's fury is just CJ's reaction to the senior staff blaming _her_ \-- knows that deep down CJ understands and would have done the same. She wants to be angry right back -- CJ was her first and best ally in the Bartlet White House (and other things, too, things that involve both of them naked in positions she should definitely not be imagining while standing in the press room). But they both spin news stories for a living, and they both know there's no good way to spin a senior staff member who leaves a party member, writes a paper on how to defeat him, and comes back to work for him.

They take the expected beating in the press, though CJ handles the room more than capably with Carol. Always with Carol now, even more than before, and Mandy's jealous as hell even though she knows she deserves it. She wonders if CJ's punishing her, laughs at herself for thinking that whatever they had meant enough that CJ would think it worth using to punish her with.

Mandy goes to see her, after. It's been three days they found out it was her memo, three days since anyone has spoken to her more than strictly necessary. She hadn't expected it to hurt this much -- she was still the new girl, after all, still the last one on everyone's lists for drinks or jokes or friendship, but she had gotten used to at least _being_ on those lists, and it's hard to be this much out of the loop.

Carol's glare seems more venomous that the ones she's been getting from the rest of the White House staff, but that might have more to do with the fact that it's eleven at night and she, Mandy, and CJ are probably the only staffers still left in the building. But she waves her into the office without a problem, even though she doesn't miss the chance to throw a pointed "you owe her so much, Mandy" at her back as she enters the office.

CJ doesn't look up from the papers on her desk as Mandy shuts the door behind her. In the circle of lamplight, the reflections from the fishbowl throwing shifting patterns across her face and messily-clipped hair, Mandy's reminded exactly why she was drawn to CJ in the first place, why they started this . . . whatever this was. They stay, frozen for a moment, Mandy's fingers still clenched around the doorknob, before CJ breaks the silence. "What do you want?"

What _does_ she want? She should be home, lying low while her maybe-friends definitely-coworkers did damage control for her. "It'd be nice if some of the support I was getting in the briefing room made its way back here." It's not a lie, but it doesn't even begin to cover what she really wants.

CJ laughs, hollow and entirely unamused. "We've come a long way from nowhere hotels on the campaign trail, Mandy. You don't get special treatment."

Mandy flushed. Respect was special treatment now, was it? "Yeah, CJ, we moved on from nowhere hotels to your office. What's this really about? Carol?" It's a guess, but a good one, she knows as soon as CJ's eyes jump to the gap in the window blinds, to Carol's dark head bent over a legal pad at her desk.

She pulls herself together quickly though, and finally meets Mandy's eyes. "No. It's about how you never told me this might be a problem. It's about the fractures this is causing in our public face and how we can't even be united in blaming you, because Leo and Josh and Toby and Sam are so pissed at you that they're pissed at _me_. And about how I want to defend you to them but I can't help but wonder if that's really a good thing for me to be doing."

Mandy bites her lip, surprised not so much by what CJ said but that she had said it at all. It's all true, of course, and uglier for it -- that's one of the reasons Mandy has never had much use for dealing solely with truths. That, and then there's the problem of how there's not much to say to those truths other than, "Are you done?"

CJ stares at her over the tops of her glasses for a long moment, so long that Mandy's considering just walking straight back out the door. Until: "Yeah. Yeah, I'm done," and she says it with such finality that Mandy knows immediately that she means she's done with more than just her diatribe.

"Okay," Mandy exhales, runs the shaky hand not gripping the doorknob through her hair. "Okay. I am, too, then." She turns to leave, thinks better of it and turns back. "I'm sorry, you know. For what it's worth. I really did think I had trashed the memo."

CJ smiles in response, a small sad ghost of a smile that probably doesn't even deserve the name, but it's a peace offering nonetheless. "It's Washington, Mandy. You can't ever trash something so well that it'll never come back to bite you in the ass."

And maybe it's a threat, or maybe it's a promise, but it's just as much of a dismissal as the "I'm calling a full lid" that she gives the press, and Mandy lets her have the last word.

She stays in her office only long enough to see Carol and CJ leave together. Wonders which parts of her relationship with CJ just died, and how much she cares.

 

* * *

 

And then there's Rosslyn. Rosslyn, where the President is shot and Josh is shot. Rosslyn, where she wasn't because the President might have told people to lay off her but their rediscovered civility never masked their distrust. Rosslyn, after which everyone moves differently. 

Donna and Toby circle around Josh when he comes back, a thin line of protectiveness whose lateness they try to make up for with intensity. CJ and Sam pass a thin silver chain between them when they think no one else is watching -- Mandy hears Carol murmur something about a necklace right before one of those times when she and CJ disappear into the Press Secretary's office and lock the door. She almost asks CJ about it, later, because she has noticed that her necklace is different now, but when she sees Carol with the chain too, she realizes that whatever lifeline those three have found isn't going to come near her. Zoey and Charlie can't seem to decide if they can't bear to see each other or if they can't bear to be apart, and that puts the President and Leo and the First Lady on edge as well. And Mandy flits around the periphery, quiet and unnoticed, hands itching for something to fix but denied access to everything as the rest of the senior staff takes care of their own. 

They protected each other after the memo leaked, after all, and didn't need her help for that. Why should they need her help now?

So it goes on, and it settles, and everyone knows how to move in this new, post-Rosslyn way. Even everyone else who wasn't there -- Ginger and Bonnie and Mrs. Landingham -- pick it up before Mandy does, and whether it's because they have other people who weren't there when all of Mandy's people _were_ , or because Mandy still remembers CJ coming back to the West Wing bandaged and disheveled and going to Carol and then the briefing room before ever coming back to Mandy doesn't really matter.

She counts two more days before she realises it's time to stop.

 

* * *

 

Because what it really comes down to is: at the end of the day, Mandy can only fix the media, not people, and she's tired of reaching out for others and finding herself with nothing but a handful of broken glass. Leaving on her own terms is not nothing. It's quieter now that she's stopped counting, and quiets still further when she decides that this leaving Josh to Donna and CJ to Carol marks the end of the last time she'll ever count days working with Bartlet's people.


End file.
